Gorse flowers, a cirl bunting, Rupert Holmes, and a piña colada
Abundance: Tuesday 14 May 2024
A few years ago, when life was less than excellent, a particular walk helped me retain balance. What starts as dark, looming conifers, eases into deciduous; the claustrophobic height and adjacency imperceptibly dropping to something relatable, lighter, more relaxed and human1. Where the trees thin, bluebells and cow parsley run away from my feet, a path worn here and there by animals making their nocturnal who-knows-why way to who-knows-where. A single wild apple pops blossom towards the sun, the bird chorus becomes more identifiable: the bicycle pump song of the great tit, the chiffchaff - perfectly named after its tune - and the babbling brook of a singing blackbird. At the hedged divide of grazed and ungrazed, an unknown song: Merlin tells me I heard - for the first time in my life - a cirl bunting, a rare species making noisy hay in the limited patch it calls home in the UK.
Here, on the mudstone over sandstone, where the dry sandy soils and southerly aspect come together, gorse thrives and with it a surprising number of grateful species. Gorse might not look like a rich habitat, but its spikiness makes it impenetrable to humans; it’s a refuge for creatures feathered and furred. Right now, showered in yellow flowers, it is alive with bees and other pollinators in search of nectar. Unseen as they may be on this bright May morning, moth and butterfly larvae make their home.
Gorse’s yellow flowers, stark against the blue sky, are not only full of nectar, they’re rich in coconut scent. I’ve intended to pick them in the past but maybe I needed a recipe, a punchline, a point, to finally bring me here, tub in hand.
Today is warm and sunny - an overdue upgrade on spring so far. Bees are alive to the gorse - at 16°C the pollen flies, and with it a more intense coconut scent that attracts both the winged and the two legged.
It take 30 slow minutes to pick enough of these small yellow flowers to amount to perhaps 4 decent handfuls. It is half an hour well spent. There is no rushing: you have to proceed relatively slowly to avoid spiking yourself silly, but it is in the settling into a slow meditative plucking that your mind might empty enough to not anticipate conversations with those who wonder what you are up to, to not throw your thoughts ahead to whatever you’ll do when you leave, where - if you are lucky - you’ll become a simple, uncomplicated creature, with a mind untroubled by anything other than what you are doing in that moment.
England in May, when the clouds part and the rain waits, is hard to beat. I hum Van’s Warm Love.
Recipes below for Gorse flower rum, Gorse flower syrup, and Gorse flower piña colada